


tear your curtains down (for sunlight is like gold)

by writergirl8



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 14:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8627251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: "I have to go," Lydia says for the third time that night, sitting up on Stiles' bed. She's been lying on her back for a few hours now while he types furiously at his laptop, his long fingers stroking roughly over the keys. She likes to watch his face illuminated by the bright white light of the screen, nose casting a shadow over the cupid's bow that she has been dying to pull between her lips all evening.
  But tonight was for homework, and Lydia had promised to keep her hands to herself as she had stood at the threshold to Stiles' bedroom and held her hand right hand up, her left hand placed upon a copy of her AP bio textbook. Which had meant hours of no kissing, hours of wanting to kiss, and hours of staring at the boy who made her so insatiable that it sometimes astounds her that she is able to get anything done when he is in the same room.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to write domestic Stydia. This happened. 
> 
> Title from Gold from Once the Musical because I'm a trashy asshole. 
> 
> I love this ship.

"I have to _go_ ," Lydia says for the third time that night, sitting up on Stiles' bed. She's been lying on her back for a few hours now while he types furiously at his laptop, his long fingers stroking roughly over the keys. She likes to watch his face illuminated by the bright white light of the screen, nose casting a shadow over the cupid's bow that she has been dying to pull between her lips all evening.

But tonight was for homework, and Lydia had promised to keep her hands to herself as she had stood at the threshold to Stiles' bedroom and held her hand right hand up, her left hand placed upon a copy of her AP bio textbook. Which had meant hours of no kissing, hours of _wanting_ to kiss, and hours of staring at the boy who made her so insatiable that it sometimes astounds her that she is able to get anything done when he is in the same room.

"You definitely don't," Stiles disagrees, fingers still moving quickly over his laptop. "You _just_ got here."

"Oh, is six hours 'just' to you?"

He looks up, blinking rapidly.

"It's been six hours?"

Her voice is a little condescending as she says, "Mhm."

"Huh."

Lydia yawns, back arching as she stretches a little, her shirt pulling over her stomach. As she unfurls herself, she notices the way his eyes are on her, mouth hanging open just a bit, and it makes a small laugh wiggle its way through Lydia's body.

"And that's why I have to leave."

His brow furrows deeper.

"Wha— why?"

She leans forward, hand sliding around the back of his head so that she can kiss his forehead.

"Because you _have_ to go to sleep, and you never will if I'm here."

Stiles shakes his head emphatically.

"I don't need sleep. I have never needed sleep. I am a machine."

"Uh-huh. Right." Her skeptical voice is enough to make his pout deepen a little bit. "Stiles, you never sleep."

"So that wouldn't change if you were here!" he points out hopefully. "Just stay, and don't sleep with me." (Stiles pulls a face.) "Sorry, did that sound like I was rejecting sex? Cuz, for the record, I would never reject sex. You can do the sex on me whenever you want. Sex me up. Sex me always."

"Oh yeah?" Lydia replies, her voice getting lower. "Hmmm." She tugs his laptop out of his hands, throws it to the side, and then straddles him, stroking her thumbs over his cheeks before sliding her hands down the front of his shirt and pushing him back onto the bed. He stares at her, eyes wide, licking his bottom lip, as Lydia swoops down to his lips, drops a kiss on them, and whispers, "Go to sleep."

He swallows. Hard.

"I know you're threatening me, but that was really hot."

She rolls her eyes.

"Goodnight, Stiles," Lydia says, climbing off of him and heading towards the door of his bedroom, picking up her bag along the way.

"Wait." His voice is a little desperate, which is the only thing that makes her stop and turn around. When she does, he's avoiding her eyes. "Will you stay with me? While I try to fall asleep?"

A piece of her melts, unable to help it. Lydia mashes her lips together before nodding seriously at him, setting her bag down onto the floor and pulling her phone and charger out of it. The small, relieved grin that Stiles offers her makes her glow a little bit, but she doesn't let on, instead choosing to say, "I'll need to borrow a shirt."

"Yes, ma'am," he says instantly, hopping out of bed and launching his body over to his chest of drawers. Lydia tries not to laugh at how she doesn't think she's ever seen him move so fast.

Stiles throws a t-shirt at her— it's bright blue and says 'stud muffin' on it, naturally— and a pair of sleep shorts that she'd probably left the weekend his dad had gone out of town and they hadn't made much use of their clothes. Then he wiggles out of his red jeans, kicking them to the floor, and Lydia gets a moment to admire his ass in his boxer-briefs before he pulls on his plaid pajama bottoms.

She clears her throat, trying to get her mind to scramble itself back into the proper order of things, and she pulls her shirt over her head as she says, "Did you finish the entire essay?"

There's a grunt of annoyance as Stiles shakes his head too emphatically, which causes his body to accidentally lurch into his dresser.

"Uh, no," he says, turning around to look at her. Lydia unbuckles her bra and throws it to the ground, then pulls the t-shirt over her head just as Stiles snatches his from behind the neck and shucks it onto the floor. "Almost, though. I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night and finish it."

"Or you could try getting a full night of sleep," Lydia suggests.

"God forbid," jokes Stiles, pulling a dark blue shirt over his head.

She wouldn't push it, seriously, she wouldn't, but he _never_ sleeps and he's exhausted all the time and there is absolutely nothing that Lydia can do to protect Stiles in this world, but by God, she can force him to go to sleep. She can take care of him like he has always taken care of her, because this is what they do. They make sure that the other one is okay, and that way, there is always someone around to shield them from the world becoming too much.

Stiles opens the door to his bedroom and Lydia follows him to the bathroom, not minding the way his hand absently grabs for hers as though he doesn't realize that they don't need to hold hands all the time. He turns on the light and scrunches up his nose at his reflection before he opens a drawer and grabs his toothbrush out of it.

"Do you have an extra one?" asks Lydia, nudging him with her hip, and Stiles contemplates this for a second before his expression clears. He turns around, opens the closet door, and proudly points to a row of several toothbrushes. "...What?"

"They're all collectable Oral B Star Wars toothbrushes," he says fondly. "I bought a shit ton of them because I wasn't sure how many opportunities I would get to have freakin' Star Wars toothbrushes. Aren't they beautiful?"

"Gorgeous," replies Lydia, snatching up one with Leia art on it and unwrapping it. Stiles beams at her a little sloppily as she squeezes some toothbrush out and puts it onto her brush before she puts some on his too. He's still smiling at her when she glances over at him, looking at little concerned. "Are you going to brush your teeth?" she asks around a mouthful of toothpaste, trying to make him laugh.

He startles into action, thrusting the toothbrush into his mouth and beginning to vigorously go at his teeth. Lydia rolls her eyes, looking back at the two of them in the mirror, right next to each other. She's usually wearing heels when she's standing next to him, and when her shoes are kicked off they're normally lying on his bed together. Lydia tilts her head to the side, surveying the two of them standing together in the mirror, her hair falling down her sides and curving around her breasts, Stiles' hips moving subconsciously as he brushes his teeth.

She likes this picture so much, she can't imagine ever wanting to look at anything else.

"I'm not sleepy," Stiles says after both of them have spit out their toothpaste. "Do you wanna just make out a little? Tire me out?"

Lydia rolls her eyes.

"You're _always_ tired," she says, grabbing some of his Clean and Clear acne wash from the drawer he keeps it in and beginning to massage it into her cheeks. "Do you have any moisturizer?"

"Yeah, I keep it around for after I shave my legs," he says sarcastically.

"Just _asking_. And if you're so sure you won't fall asleep, you never will."

"What, like a watched pot never boils?"

"Of course not," sniffs Lydia, "that's completely scientifically inaccurate." Stiles turns on the sink to rinse his face and bats some water at her playfully. "This is more psychological. You'll get agitated because you're not falling asleep, and then your agitation will keep you awake. It's simple, really."

"Yeah, the simplicity of how fucked up I am really never fails to astound me."

She lowers the towel that she's using to dry her face and stretches up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.

"Don't," she murmurs, fingers wrapping around the fabric of his t-shirt as she slides her left hand down the back of his neck soothingly. "Don't do that."

He swallows hard, eyes skating all over her face, taking it all in.

"Okay," he responds, voice a little hoarse. This time, it's Lydia who joins their hands together as she walks back over to Stiles' bedroom.

He gets under the covers first, while she goes over to his dresser and steals his hairbrush, then begins smoothly running it through her hair as she sits on his bed with him.

"What time do you want to get up for school tomorrow?" asks Lydia softly. "I can set an alarm."

"Do you have to ask your mom if you can stay over?" questions Stiles in return.

"She doesn't really say 'no' very much after the whole Eichen thing," Lydia jokes wryly, and for a moment, Stiles' entire body tenses at that word. She doesn't say anything, instead choosing to cover his hand with hers until he un-tenses a little bit, laying back down and smushing his pillow so that it's more comfortable. "I'll text her after you fall asleep."

"Okay."

She feels his fingers dance softly over the tips of her hair on the side that she isn't brushing, and it makes Lydia smile. This moment, right here, feels so astronomically huge, even if it is nothing. It is actually everything; it is the thing she had been waiting for, the thing that she had chased across worlds and planes. It isn't exactly what Allison had been talking about— those long moments in the hallways, they exist for them, but it's different. This is different. It is softer, more well worn, and yet somehow more exciting.

It's always been hard for her to say 'i love you,' but Lydia _thinks_ it with ever fiber of herself, staring down at Stiles as he ties little knots in the parts of her hair that she'd just brushed.

"You're a nuisance," she tells him softly, brushing over the strands again before she throws the brush to the side and begins to braid her hair back to go to sleep.

"Your nuisance," he says, worming his body closer to hers so that he can fondly nudge his nose against her knee. "A nuisance who looooves you."

"Are you a tired nuisance yet?" asks Lydia. "Because if you're not asleep in an hour, things are going to get violent."

"Hot."

"M'kay." She sighs when he kisses her wrist, then rolls over so that he can turn off the lamp on his bedside table. Then he lies on his back at the center of the bed and Lydia curls into his side, her hand resting on his chest over his thin t-shirt. His skin is so warm, and she can feel him breathing next to her as he kisses the top of her head. "Tell me a story," she requests quietly, suddenly unwilling to let him drift away from her quite yet.

"What kinda story?"

The tone of his voice would indicate that he knows just how sacred this moment is to both of them.

"A Stiles and Lydia story," she says contently.

"Cira?"

"Elementary school."

"Hmmm." He thinks for a second, then a laugh rumbles through him. "Oh my god, okay, so one time we were partnered up during d-e-a-r time in elementary school."

"D-e-a-r?"

"Drop everything and read."

"Why did we need to be partnered for that?"

"Did you _go_ to Beacon Hills elementary school?"

"Debatable."

"We read out loud to each other on Thursdays."

"Okay. Continue."

"So, okay, you were reading one of those Royal Diary books, and I was reading the Secrets of Droon. And, naturally, you decided that there was no way we were going to read _my_ dumb book—"

"I was never interested in magic."

"Ironic, isn't it?"

"Oh, very."

"So I pick up the book and I start to read, and I'm like… yeah, this is going awesome, this is going great. Sitting in the bean bag chairs with Lydia Martin, reading a book about Elizabeth the first."

"Oh god. What did I do?"

"My pronounciation."

"Oh no."

"I would read a line, and you'd correct my pronunciation. I swear to god, even when I was _right,_ you would tell me that I didn't put enough emphasis on the right syllable. Also, you hated my voices, and it's not like you wanted me to use character voices for them, you just told me that my reading wasn't steady enough and it was creating a dissonance in your head about my voices for the characters versus how you were imagining them."

"Well, you're playing Elizabeth, you have to be _confident_."

"Yeah, you said that."

"Oh no."

"So I'm sitting there, I'm trying so hard to impress you so that you notice my magical fourth grade reading skills, or maybe third grade? I'm not sure, strike that from the record. Point is, after a while, I see you start to totally drift off into la la land because you've gotten bored of pointing out all the ways I suck."

"It's bound to take energy out of a girl."

"So that's when I decided that it might be funny to… you know… get you to pay attention to me again."

"Oh no."

"And I decided to do that by—"

"Oh no."

"-Making the story about robots."

She buries her face in his chest and starts laughing. Stiles laughs too, emitting a few snickers into the darkness of his bedroom while he settles his hands lightly on top of her ass.

"How long did it take me to notice?"

"I got to this part where Robert Dudley started attacking Elizabeth with his spinny robot blades before you turned towards me with these really suspicious, narrowed eyes and said 'that's _not_ how the story goes.' Like everything I'd said earlier about Elizabeth trying to teach her robot father how to love had been totally historically accurate."

Her cold toes curl underneath the covers, knocking into Stiles' socked feet.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that we were never partners again?"

"Uh, no," he chuckles. "You were partners with Harley next week, and I got to be partners with Danny, who was, incidentally, reading the same book as you had been."

"That was definitely a good one." She places a kiss on his chest, then reaches for his hand and puts it on her back so that he can feel her breaths moving through her body. "You ready to sleep, Stilinski?" Lydia asks softly.

"I don't wanna."

"You have to."

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

He scrunches up his nose.

"Solid."

" _I_ thought so."

He leans down to kiss her lips gently, once, twice, and then a final, more lingering time. Lydia melts, feeling like the greatest decision she had ever made was allowing Stiles Stilinski to be her weakness.

"'Night, Lyds," he whispers.

"Goodnight."

With the feeling of her body moving under his hand, Stiles falls asleep almost _quickly_ for him. Lydia has never quite seen the process, but one minute his thumb is moving gently over the curve of her spine, and suddenly his breathing is deeper and his face is relaxed, the tension pulled out of the muscles.

Lydia sits up on her elbows and traces the lines of his face with her fingers in the quiet of his bedroom. By light of the moonlight, she can see the dark circles under his eyes that are constantly taunting her, reminding her that she isn't enough to fix him all the way and never will be. But she can also see the moles that she loves, and the softness of his brow when it isn't furrowed, and she can see how beautifully sharp his cheekbones are in the moonlight, the redness there reminding Lydia of innocence.

She loves him so much that it chokes at her, sweeping her body into a frenzy until suddenly she is blinking back tears, staring at her sleeping boyfriend who got taken from her too many times, who almost didn't find his way back, who she had _forgotten_ and had never, ever been able to forget, even when she was supposed to.

Overwhelmed, Lydia extricates herself from Stiles' embrace and opens his bedroom door just a crack. She slips out of it, then tiptoes down the stairs and breathes a sigh of relief when she manages to make it to the kitchen without hitting that creaky stair that she always steps on when she's trying to sneak downstairs for something or other.

By the time the front door to the house opens, Lydia already has the tea kettle on the stove and is bored from waiting for it to heat up.

"Lydia," comes the sheriff's voice, not seeming altogether surprised to see her in his kitchen at two o'clock in the morning.

"Hi," she replies, cheeks lifting into a smile. "How was your shift?"

"Boring." He looks happy about that, which makes _her_ happy. "What're you makin'?"

"Tea," Lydia tells him, getting two mugs out of the cabinet. "And guess what?"

"What?"

She smiles as she says, "I got Stiles to sleep before one thirty."

A beam stretches across the sheriff's weathered face.

"How?"

"I threatened him with my magical scream," jokes Lydia, turning off the stove just before the whistle goes off from the tea kettle. She carefully pours the water into the sheriff's mug first, then slides it over to him. "It was very effective."

When she turns around from making her own cup, hands clutched around the warm ceramic, the sheriff is still staring into the depths of his mug. She wants to ask him what's wrong, but instinct tells her to bite her tongue and wait it out.

In the end, Lydia is glad she did.

"Thank you," the sheriff says. His voice is rough with emotion. "You don't know… I don't think you have any idea…" He stops. Looks up from his mug so that she can see the startling seriousness in his eyes. "When he was gone, and you wanted him back because I loved him so much and he loved me… well. I know you know that his mom is gone. I know you know that we're all each other has. But you knew how much I needed him even when I didn't know. Nobody had to tell you."

She shakes her head, eyes dropping to her tea.

"I didn't do it just for you."

"You did it because you love him."

"I needed him back too."

"But you didn't need to be there for me the entire time. You didn't need to do that, Lydia."

She swallows back the lump in her throat, unsure of how to handle the intensity in his expression. She's used to meeting Stiles' intense looks gaze-for-gaze, but this is different. This is gratitude that she doesn't deserve. She had just wanted him _back_.

(She always just… wants him.)

"It wasn't like that," she says quietly. "I'm not some…"

"Hero?" asks the sheriff, looking amused for reason that Lydia doesn't understand. "You are."

"No."

 _I just have voices in my head_.

"You've saved an incredible number of people. You're just as brave as any of my officers. And even if none of that was true, you've been my son's hero since he was an eight-year-old boy who needed a distraction from watching his mom slowly fall to pieces in front of him."

Her eyes swim with tears as she stares down at the mug, realizing that the yellowed image printed onto the white mug is the poster from Gone With The Wind.

It makes her think of Claudia. And that makes her think of all the tiny things that she picked up from Stiles speaking, all the different ways she paid attention to him like he paid attention to her.

"I wish," Lydia begins, then stutters to a stop when she doesn't know how to finish the sentence. She wishes that she had fallen in love with him sooner. But then she also doesn't. She wishes that she had been less stubborn to him, but she doesn't wish away any piece of what they had before they became more than simply _everything._

"I know," the sheriff replies. "But it needed to happen like it did."

"It did."

"But I sat there every day, watching that boy obsess over a girl who I thought he'd never get to be with. I mean, I watched it evolve from a crush that he jabbered on about at the dinner table to a crush that he couldn't talk about because it was too hard… and then I watched you two become friends, and I watched him fall in love with you, and I realized that I was watching my kid do _anything_ for a girl who I had always written off as a funny story we would tell later. And tonight I come home and you got him to go to sleep, and you make him _smile_ , and you brought him back to me. And I think at one point I might have hated you for what loving you did to my kid, but now I just… I couldn't be more grateful to you, Lydia. So thank you."

Her chin is trembling as she wills herself not to cry, and when the sheriff pushes back from his chair at the island, Lydia assumes that he's getting up to walk away and give her the space that she needs. Instead, she hears the heavy clomps of his boots as he walks around to pull her into his arms and squeeze her tight against his body.

She's relieved that he doesn't comment on the way her tears stain the material of his green jacket.

"Get some sleep, kid," he tells her, pulling back and smiling fondly at her standing there in his son's t-shirt. She nods. Grabs her mug of tea. Scampers back upstairs, opening Stiles' door a crack before sliding inside and slipping underneath the covers.

He's still asleep.

She stays there for a few moments, feeling loved and unsettled and comfortable and shaken up. She thinks her hands might be shaking at the intensity of it all, because _all_ Lydia does is run away, and this family doesn't. They bleed their care for each other, they show _everything_ , and they give so much that she doesn't know how they have anything left to offer. And still, they do.

As if he's reading her thoughts, Stiles smacks his lips in his sleep and shifts diagonally, throwing his arm over her side and burying his face in the back of her neck. She tenses for a moment, worried about waking him, and then melts as he grunts low in his throat. Lydia places her hand over his where it rests on her stomach and burrows backwards against his warmth, a little closer, yet still not close enough.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she will wake up with him, and she will have him tell her more stories about them growing up together, and she will find out every single cut and scrape and bruise that he has had that he can remember, and she will tell him that she is terrified of heights even though it defies all logic.

Tomorrow she'll be even more his than she has been every day this week.


End file.
